Saturday People OCTOBER 6, 2012
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BUCHI
•Photos: OMONIYI AYEDUN
I abandoned my PhD programme for music when God called me By EMERSON GOBERT, JR.
O
ne peculiar thing about gospel reggae crooner, Buchi Atuonwu, is that he prays and praises God at 12 noon every day. Saturday Sun witnessed this recently, as an interview had to be delayed for him to perform the daily ritual, which lasts for about 15 minutes. During the interview, the musician revealed how he shelved his doctoral degree and lecturing career in the ivory tower to go into full-time gospel music ministration. He talked about how he uses music to preach the word of God, among others. Why do you choose to be a one-name artiste? That appeals very strongly to me, but I must say also that I admired greatly a certain one-name writer called Chinweizu. I admired his novel approach to issues. He came different and he came refreshing and strikingly. He was a one-name writer, so I think the one-name thing stuck. Could you tell us about your childhood? I had an interesting childhood. I was born in Kaduna to parents of Abia State origin, but I actually grew up in the coal city of Enugu. Now, as you would expect, I’ve talked so much about myself, repeatedly about these issues that today, it doesn’t hold much fancy for me anymore for me talking so much about my person. It holds little fancy for me talking about my person, but in a nutshell, I was born in Kaduna to parents of Abia State origin and I grew up in Enugu, then later on in life, I came to Lagos for my higher education and I’ve remained there ever since.
Which schools did you attend when you came to Lagos? The University of Lagos. I read English Language and Literature. I hold a Master’s degree. I also hold half of a Ph.D degree (laughs). Does that mean that you are in the process of getting a Ph.D? I had completed my Ph.D and I did very well, but I did not complete my thesis. I didn’t write and defend my thesis and I left because it was time to leave. Now talking spiritually, it was time to leave and so I left. I long to return to the classroom because, in a manner of speaking, it is my first love. It is a deep longing that I have, but I’m not yet permitted to do that. I excelled in it and I was happy doing it. In my first degree, as in my second degree and in the Ph.D class, I think that the records in the University of Lagos would bear me witness, that I was the best student in the department and I say that with every sense of humility. I said that to let you know that, naturally, such a student would want to be in the classroom. Everyone wants to be in the area of their strength and in that way, I long to be in the academics. I long to go back to school, but as I said, I am not released yet from within. What inspired you into music? It was a very strong desire to pass a message across to my generation. I know that I have something to say. I’ve something to contribute to my generation and it is in a message. It is in the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as delivered to me. I began to write that message. I wrote it in poems but hardly anyone read me because the reading culture has dwindled
greatly in our society, as you well know and so poem after poem, I poured out my heart and my message, but I didn’t get it. I felt I was not making sufficient impact because literature was not what this generation longed for. They longed for music and, thankfully, I had some music left in me, having been a nightclub deejay for many years before I became a Christian. So it reached deep within me, prompted, I must say, by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome. With the deejay skills and with that bit of music in me, I began to express my message. So the earliest songs that I sang were musical renditions of poetry that I had already written, as at this time. So I began to sing my poems. That’s how I got into gospel music. So it became for me an extension of the classroom, where I was lecturing in the University of Lagos and it was time to move and I still had a message to pass on to the people so the music stage became an extension of the classroom for me. Why do you choose the reggae genre? I didn’t choose reggae; reggae chose me. Reggae appealed to me when I was young and reggae won me over when I was much younger and I began to listen to all manner of reggae and so by the time I became a Christian and there was a need for me to sing, I had to use the form, which I already had internalised before now and that’s reggae music. How many albums do you have to date? I have five audio albums and two video and the five albums have remarkably come at intervals of three years. The first was released in 1999; the second in 2002, the third, in 2005, the fourth, in 2008 and the first one in 2011, but I’m about to break it by not
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